Hyperdimension Neptunia gets Dreamcasted – game review

Battling your way through a real-life console war as the personification of Sega sounds like a great idea for a game, but is the reality as exciting as the premise?

Hyperdimension Neptunia (PS3) – phony war

This may be the worst realisation of a good idea we’ve ever played. The idea in question is a parody of the current generation console wars, where the competing systems are personified as warring goddesses, with the mortal realm suffering plagues of monsters borne of a thousand video game clichés. Now keep whatever interest that’s piqued in check as we explain exactly how badly the game wastes its potential.

The first warning signs are that this is by tiny Japanese developer Idea Factory, a studio of absolutely no regard whose best known title is probably last year’s so-so Disgaea crossover Trinity Universe . This shares a lot of basic technology with that game, which means endless talking head cut scenes, dire controls and PlayStation 2 style graphics.

Idea Factory must’ve been so worried about getting sued that the references to the current generation of home consoles are so oblique as to be almost pointless. Black Heart, goddess of Lastation is meant to be the living embodiment of the PlayStation 3, Green Heart, goddess of Leanbox is the Xbox 360, and White Heart is the goddess of Lowee – in other words the Wii.

You play as Purple Heart, aka Neptune – goddess of Neputnia and an allegory for Sega (the Neptune was a proposed combo of the Mega Drive and 32X). At the beginning of the game the other three goddesses decide their war has been going on for too long and try and break the stalemate by casting down Neptune.

Neptune wakes up in the mortal realm of Gamindustri (really) suffering from amnesia. At this point two of the game’s main problems start to become obvious. There’s a line of dialogue about Neptune’s amnesia being ‘original’ but we’re not sure whether that’s meant to be a knowing in-joke or just an accident of translation. We suspect it was meant to be a joke but just didn’t survive the translation very well, but either way it’s not funny.

The other problem is the game’s lecherous attitude to women, with most of the characters appearing to be very young, yet disturbingly underdressed, girls. This is hardly an uncommon problem in Japanese role-players but here it seems particularly unnecessary given all the pseudo-erotic posing takes even more time away from the industry parody that should have been.

Instead almost every potential for comedy is squandered, not least because none of the characterisations of the three goddesses and their realms rings true (why is the Wii goddess a sweary psychopath?). There are references to other games (particularly Sega titles – since they distributed the game In Japan) but they’re usually just witless name drops that have no relevance to either the plot or the gameplay.

There is no overworld to explore, just a series of identical looking dungeons filled with random battles against enemies that look a bit like a Space Invader or a slime from Dragon Quest. The movement and camera in the dungeons are dreadful, as if they’re the result of some low-scoring computer student’s first attempt at a video game.

It doesn’t really matter as there’s very little to do in the dungeons except get into fights, which to be fair are the highlight of the game. The basics are similar to any turn-based combat system, but instead of selecting pre-set moves you have to try and invent your own combo using more basic attacks. You can name them and even add a picture to illustrate them from your hard drive.

You also have magic but you can’t use it whenever you want, only dictate a hit point level at which they should be cast automatically. Even then there’s a random element and if the activation rate for the spell isn’t 100 per cent, there’s no guarantee it’ll be cast when you need it. Since this includes healing the whole concept almost kills the game stone dead right there.

The disconnect between what this game should’ve been and the shambling failure it’s ended up as is so wide it almost seems like a parody of itself. Although once again it’s not a very funny one.

In Short:An allegory of the video games industry featuring consoles as characters should’ve been comedy gold, but if this were a games machine it’d be the Atari Jaguar.

Pros:The combo system has promise and the idea of using images from your hard drive is great. The concept behind the plot also has plenty of potential…

Cons:… none of which is realised. Terrible script that flubs all the obvious gags. Boring combat and horrible magic system. Hellish graphics and music.